


burnout

by butraura



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Bellamy has an emotional epiphany, Everything is pretty much the same through s6, F/M, Post S6, Sad!Clarke, pretend s7 never happened, tags are not my friends, worried!bellamy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:14:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25044448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butraura/pseuds/butraura
Summary: He wonders, also, if the fire could talk, what stories would it tell? What secrets would it keep?-Clarke keeps an unsettling distance from the group as everyone recovers from Abby's death and the Primes' demise. Bellamy notices when things get back to normal that he never sees her. Madi tells him that Clarke feels like everyone hates her and so the woman spends a lot of time alone these days. Bellamy gets frustrated at everyone and storms away from the Sanctum grounds and accidentally stumbles on Clarke alone at a campfire.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 17
Kudos: 201





	burnout

About three weeks after the events of Sanctum, like being saved from the brink of death, killing Russell Prime’s family, and floating her own mother, there seems to be a little restoration of normalcy. Clarke, Madi, and some of the others move into the home Russell had built for Simone. They assign rooms and call dibs and are rather vicious in their ploys to steal the bedrooms - Murphy all but booby traps the room he insists should be his and Emori’s. It doesn’t take when Miller makes the case for the Primes sleeping in the Palace. 

“We should be _honoured_ you want to live with us at all,” he had sneered, then screamed, as Murphy lunged for him. 

Ultimately it was decided that they could stay but they took the smallest room. Indra advised them that because some of the people of Sanctum still believe in the divinity of the Primes, _Daniel_ and _Kaylee Prime_ should divide their time between duties.

Murphy didn’t plan on being shafted with all of this responsibility when he took the mind drive. 

So Miller and Jackson get the room, much to Murphy’s dismay, and Bellamy and Echo take the room beside it. Clarke and Madi share a room for now while Gaia and Indra split. Raven and Niylah bunk together as well. Bellamy would have liked Octavia to join them at their home - maybe they could finally work on mending their relationship once and for all, but she opts to stay with Diyoza and Hope - a family of its own, and certainly a friendship he didn’t expect. 

Diyoza and Octavia had apparently gone into the Anomaly on their own and emerged seconds later with a four-year old Hope instead of an unborn fetus. Just trying to wrap their heads around it makes everyone dizzy. Gabriel seemed far less distressed than the others, but everyone accepts this new reality - the Anomaly sucks you in and spits you out seconds later but you’re gone for years on the other side.

Basically - don’t engage the green mist. So they don’t.

They make the executive decision to keep their Cryo counterparts on ice. Sanctum is still reeling from the destruction of their government and there really isn’t any way to support hundreds of Eligius criminals as well as their own people _and_ the people of Sanctum. At least not yet. 

Everything falls into a rhythm by the fourth or fifth day. Everyone has duties and assignments to help keep things running. Madi finally gets to go school and Gaia tries her hand at having a job that doesn’t require acute observation of Madi’s every movement. Indra takes charge of Wonkru’s people and becomes the face of the movement when Clarke or Bellamy aren’t around. Murphy and Emori take their duties in stride, de-escalating conflicts as they arise and setting boundaries for the Children of Gabriel and the Adjusters. Miller recruits some of the in-between people, the ones stuck between not believing in the divinity of the Primes but also not subscribing to the politics of ‘death to Primes’. He starts training them how to fight and use guns and he begins to develop an exercise regime to make his classes run smoother. Jackson and Jordan set up in Sanctum’s infirmary, familiarizing themselves with this planet’s tech and comparing it to what they know. Jordan, knowing next to nothing about medicine other than what he learned growing up, does his best not to become a hindrance and learn as much as he can. 

Raven assigns herself to the Mechanic Workshop, keeping busy with the influx of medical equipment that needs repair and fixing up all the old motorcycles that are collecting dust in storage. Octavia and Diyoza spend their days in the fields, farming and teaching Hope about the world, while learning much about it themselves from Sanctum citizens. Echo bounces between co-leading Miller’s classes (where he excels with a gun, she is formidable with a bow) and learning from Raven in the shop. The hope is that she can learn what Raven taught Emori because Emori is now indisposed nearly all the time during the days.

Bellamy takes up teaching here and there, teaching survival skills to the kids Madi’s age and younger, as well as some of the history of the world that he’d learned on the Ring. In particular the students love the Roman history lessons and he is all too happy to indulge. He also finds himself trying to fix what’s broken between him and Octavia while also trying to sneak infirmary shifts with Jackson. All of this plus trying to lead them all becomes tiresome. He has to remind himself that there’s no rush. Everyone is safe now. But then, why does Clarke always seem so afraid?

Clarke confers a lot with Indra about specifics and rationing and also cooking meals for the HouseKru. She doesn’t try to engage as much anymore and she’s more interested in Madi’s schooling and not being a burden. She’s just… quiet. And it’s unlike Clarke.

And she knows it’s strange. But she cannot bring herself to entertain anyone anymore. No one is in immediate danger, therefore no one needs her, so she doesn’t have to pretend to be OK. She does, of course. But at least behind closed doors and after Madi’s asleep, she can cry in peace. She doesn’t have to worry about staying strong for anyone.

So she sticks to the outskirts, only ever a fleeting body in people’s peripherals. She talks to Indra a lot and does laundry at home and helps Madi with homework. She takes to domestic life as much as she can. She avoids people as much as she can. She avoids _him_.

Bellamy figures that out after a week.

After _two_ weeks, he’s getting irritated. Everywhere he’s _sure_ she’d be she isn’t. One day he spent 2 hours walking in circles around Sanctum looking for her. He didn’t find her until she quietly walked past his room and slipped into her own before he could intercept her stride down the hall. Then she was up and out of the house the next day, her spot at the table empty but breakfast hot and ready. She made a full feast for them and took off.

It was around then when Bellamy realized that their friends weren’t even feigning appreciation for the stuff Clarke was doing. No thanks or comments on her generosity. No smile as they eat more food than they’d ever been offered on the ground in one sitting. He began to look at them differently as they stopped thinking about Clarke at all. 

He’d pushed away from the kitchen table one morning so quickly the sharp sound of the chair against the tile floor made them all wince and he’d stalked out without a word. “Bellamy?” Echo had called, but he never answered. He’d taken a walk to the palace, then to the very top of it to the lookout point, the high altitude good to clear his head. He’d hoped he’d see her walking around on the Sanctum grounds, but he didn’t.

So three weeks have passed. Bellamy cuts back on his lessons by a few and lets Indra (and Clarke, supposedly?) run the political side of things while he takes more infirmary shifts. He now knows how to triage and prioritize trauma patients, and he knows his ABCs. He even knows how to set several different bones. It’s something he’d like to tell Clarke about, if only he could fucking find her.

When he returns home, he hopes to see her, but instead is greeted by the intoxicating smell of some sort of stew. Madi is chatting away with Gaia between spoonfuls and the others are gathered in the living room talking about their days and how Raven’s got nearly four motorcycles ready for use. 

When he looks around the rooms, Madi understands what he’s looking for. “She’s not here,” she tells him sullenly, stirring the meat around in her bowl. “I haven’t seen her since this morning.”

He frowns and sits across from the teen. “I never see her anymore,” he complains softly.

She nods, refraining from making eye contact. “She won’t talk to me. I know she’s depressed but she won’t talk to _anyone_.”

“Depressed?” he wonders incredulously.

Madi does look at him then, but her gaze is unimpressed and rather dangerous. “She just lost her mom and everyone here still hates her. Wouldn’t that depress you?”

He drops his head to his hands and rubs his hair. “I don’t understand, Madi. Why is everyone angry at her?”

“She’s being held to a different standard, I guess. I don’t know. Apparently everyone else is allowed to make mistakes that cost people their lives or, in some cases, make purposeful decisions to kill people without an imminent threat, but Clarke isn’t.”

Bellamy narrows his eyes in confusion. “Who are you talking about?”

She nearly laughs, but it’s empty. “Are you serious? Murphy killed a couple of the 100 just because,” she begins. “Echo kills everyone just ‘in case’. Miller helped Octavia kill people in the bunker.” She gives a soft glance to Gaia then. “Gaia and Niylah helped. Raven helped blow up hundreds of grounders.”

He sighs, guilt pulling at his soul. “I did the same thing… When I helped Pike kill those grounders.”

“The difference is, Bellamy, that you don’t resent Clarke for the things she’s done. She left you to die after you guys gave me the Flame and you still don’t hate her. She doesn’t hate you. She doesn’t hate any of you and yet everyone continues to look at her like she’s the most evil person they can imagine. Even though she was killed. Even though she lost Finn, too. Even though she lost Lexa. Even though she lost her parents… Even though she lost _you_.”

Bellamy starts at that. “She didn’t lose me, Madi. I’m here. I’ve been searching for her every single day. I spent an entire year on Earth trying to keep her alive. I’m right here.”

Madi raises her eyes at Bellamy. “Then where is she?” 

Before Bellamy can answer she jumps up from the table and storms up the stairs. He hears the door to her room slam with a voluminous bang and then Murphy chimes in from the other room with a yell. “Hey, take it easy, Rugrat!”

For whatever reason, that sends Bellamy over the edge. He charges for the front door of the home and gives one last glare to the group of friends in the den. “You’re a dick, Murphy.” And he storms out.

It’s the evening now, so the suns are setting together, the pinkest orange tinting his surroundings. Bellamy takes an uncharacteristically long stroll away from Sanctum. Now that the radiation shield has been lowered, people were free to roam the unexplored areas. Teams of varying sizes were sent out on sanctioned fielding missions every now and again to help learn about their world, but Bellamy often goes alone to help clear his head.

So he walks for a while. So long, in fact, it’s dark before he decides to stop. Dark enough that he can hardly see anything and he cusses himself out for straying so far from home without rations, a tent, and most importantly, a _light_ . Because he can hardly see now. He sighs. “Way to go, Dumbass,” he tells himself. He _tries_ walking back in the direction he came from but the truth is that he has no idea if he’s even remotely on the right path. The sky eventually becomes a shade of black so absolutely so final he doesn’t think he’s ever seen a darker colour. When coupled with the endless forest around him, it’s futile. 

He’s about to give in, he thinks, and camp on the ground for the night - or at least until the dawn offers _some_ relief between the trees - but he sees a light in the distance.

OK, maybe it’s not a light. Perhaps it’s a hallucination, or maybe even the Anomaly taunting him. But he pursues it, if anything to give him a sense of direction. He tries to be stealthy in case it’s a person from home, or worse, someone _not_ from home that wants to hurt him. But the forest floor is nothing but sticks and twigs on the ground snapping with each step. 

Once he’s close enough to the light, he can see that it’s a campfire in a tiny clearing, and beside it is a small person, knees to their chest as they watch it intently. He gets closer slowly, trying to make out their features before confronting them.

It’s the hair that he sees first. The short, soft hair sitting gently on her shoulders, then the focused expression in her eyes as she watches the flames blaze in front of her, as if she could will them into dancing just for her. If anyone could, it would be her, Bellamy supposes. He then notices the sketchbook on the ground beside her but he can’t make out the drawings.

He almost makes it to the clearing before she notices, but to his surprise she doesn’t startle. She looks up at him, frowns, then returns her eyes to the flames as they crackle. “Clarke,” he breathes in disbelief. 

“Hey,” she greets simply, unbothered.

He approaches her carefully, like she’d flee if he was too quick, then sits beside her, only a couple inches between their legs. “Why are you all the way out here?” He purposely softens his voice so as to not sound so frustrated.

“Why are you?” she counters with a shrug. 

He frowns. “I just needed to take a walk,” he offers.

“Me too.”

He peers around at her gear and back to the fire. “You’re awfully prepared for just a walk.”

She arches her eyebrow but still doesn’t look at him. “Some of us don’t like to get lost at night.”

He snorts to himself. They’re quiet for a while, the snap of the fire filling the silence between them. He can’t help but peer at her every few moments and he knows that she notices every time he does it. Eventually he speaks. “Where’ve you been lately?”

“Around,” she tells him easily. 

“That’s not helpful,” he complains.

This time she chuckles. “Oh well.”

“Clarke, c’mon.”

She sighs. “I need space, Bellamy. I just need time to myself. Sanctum is loud, the house is loud. I just need quiet.” 

“You know you can talk to me about anything,” his voice barely above a whisper.

“I know,” she admits. “But I don’t want to talk. I have nothing to say.” 

He picks at the ground then and tosses leaves and sticks in the fire. Something that’s been eating at him for a while pulls at his heart and he has to take several deep breaths before he continues. When he does, he says, “can I ask you a question?” 

“Sure.”

“I want you to be honest with me, Clarke. No matter what the answer is. Can you do that?”

She looks at him, the worry in her eyes grounding him, but she nods. “Yes.”

The words taste wrong as soon as they escape his lips, but he continues anyway. “Do you wish you hadn’t been saved from Josephine?”

She turns to him in surprise, clearly shocked by what the question implies, but she doesn’t answer him as quickly as he’d like, which upsets him. In fact, it’s nearly a whole minute before she opens her mouth to speak, but when she does he regrets ever asking. “A part of me wishes I’d stayed dead, yes. It would have been easier for everyone. Maybe my mom would still be alive.” 

He can’t help the anger he conveys with one huff, but she feels it and instinctively turns away from him. “You can’t seriously think that.”

“Can’t I?” she argues, her voice only slightly louder. “If I’d stayed dead, Russell would have built you guys the compound you deserve. I could be with my dad. I could stop feeling so guilty all the time.” She stops then, decides it’s enough.

Against his better judgment, he reaches out and takes one of her hands in his. “You have nothing to feel guilty for, Clarke.”

She squeezes it. “Whether or not that’s true is irrelevant, Bellamy. It doesn’t change how I feel,” she explains. “It doesn’t change that I feel like I’ve let everyone down. It doesn’t change the fact that if I’d died and _stayed_ dead, then Sanctum wouldn’t be on the brink of war.”

“War isn’t your fault.”

“It seems to follow me, though. I am become Death,” she murmurs. “Destroyer of worlds.”

That takes him back to Earth. To the first time she’d ever quoted Oppenheimer to him and he’d thought, just maybe, he could really like this girl. He was right, as it turns out. More right than he’d ever realize. Because before long he loved her and then was _in_ love with her and then he lost her and then he found her and it was too late. Because time was never on their side. If it was, maybe they’d be something by now. Something more than brief touches and longing glances. Something that didn’t include her avoiding him at such extreme lengths.

He rests his chin on his arm, turning his gaze back to the fire. “I wish you’d understand how much I love you, Clarke.”

She turns her head to face him, mirroring his position with a sad smile. “I know you care about me, Bellamy. I never questioned that.”

“That’s not what I said,” he challenges, his tone equal. “I said I love you.”

She peers at him with the faintest chuckle. “I love you, too,” she whispers.

“But it’s not enough,” he concludes on his own.

She looks like she may cry at that, but she doesn’t. She squeezes his hand again, as if to remind him he still has her, but the words she says next don’t comfort him. “I wish it was, Bellamy. There’s just so much you don’t understand-”

“Then tell me,” he almost shouts. He lowers his voice then, calming himself. Then, a whisper: “Make me understand. Because if the alternative is me losing you forever, I don’t want it.”

She turns away from him. “There’s just some things you can’t understand. It’s not your fault.” He stares at her expectantly and she sighs before continuing. “Look, I don’t know what you want from me, Bellamy. I’m sorry if I’m not saying the right words, but I can’t fix everything and everyone. The rest of you guys have been managing quite well without me, anyway. That’s why I’ve been on my own. So I don’t have to look at the people that blame me for the devastation of their world. And if I say I wish I’d let Octavia attack Shallow Valley, then what I’m saying is I wish she succeeded in destroying my home, killing Diyoza, and probably executing me for reasons unbeknownst to me. I’m so far removed from the family we once were.”

“Clarke-”

“And I just need to be on my own. I’m good at it. I did it for two months before I met Madi and I did it on the Ring when I was in SkyBox. I’m doing it now.”

“You can’t reasonably expect me to leave you here and let you continue hating yourself,” he scoffs. His tone is harsh but the fear in it is what resonates with Clarke.

She looks at him for a long while, mesmerized by the way the fire lights his deep brown eyes. She finds comfort in the familiar way he locks his jaw when he’s trying not to cry or scream, and the fact that he’s still holding her hand like a lifeline. Like she might evaporate if he lets go. Instead of answering him, she just leans on him and rests her head on his shoulder. Perhaps this small gesture would placate him.

He reacts the way she’d hoped by taking a deep breath and wrapping an arm around her, his grip on her nearly as tight as the way he’d held her before Praimfaya. He rests his own head on hers and for a moment she thinks this was as good as it could get, but then he kisses the top of her head. They’re quiet for a long time as they watch the fire and listen to their own heartbeats. In fact, she nearly falls asleep until he speaks.

“You know I almost asked you to run?” he murmurs softly into her hair.

She frowns, not that he could see. “What do you mean? Run where? When?”

“On Earth,” he answers. “When Dax had tried to kill us. I almost asked you to run with me, somewhere far away. You were the only one who looked at me like I was a human being. You were the reason I felt like I could be better than I was when the dropship landed.”

She pulls away gently to look at him. “You were going to ask me to run away with you?” He nods, his jaw locked again. She can tell this is a difficult conversation for him. “Why didn’t you?” she asks finally.

He takes a deep breath. “I knew you wouldn’t have,” he answers. “You’re too good to have abandoned everyone.”

She looks to the ground, then to him, then to the forest. “I might have,” she admits.

He looks at her incredulously. “You would’ve?”

She shrugs, averting his gaze. “I… I don’t know,” she admits. “After the Finn thing and Wells dying, you were the only person I felt like I could talk to. I remember feeling overwhelmed about the fact that we were basically in charge of a bunch of kids. I remember wanting an escape. I might have regretted it later, but if you had asked me then, maybe I would have gone.”

“I wish I’d have asked.”

She looks at him with a shake of her head. “No, don’t say that. Things would be so different now, and the chances are we’d _all_ be dead. Because of Praimfaya. We work best in a group,” she assures him.

“And yet, you’re out here.”

Ouch. She deserves that, she supposes. She thinks carefully about how to answer him, and opts for the painful truth. “Everything’s OK, now.” When he doesn’t reply, she continues. “We aren’t fighting for our lives or trying to save the human race. Everything’s OK. Sure, I mean, if we find ourselves at the whim of some otherworldly force and someone has to make the tough choices, you guys know where to find me. But for now?” She twists her mouth into a pensive frown. “I just… Everyone is fine with me on the sidelines while we build our home.”

Bellamy wants to scream. He wants to shake her shoulders violently with the hope that it would knock some sense into her. But he understands that he can’t understand what she’s feeling, and that pisses him off even more. It frustrates him to ends he can’t put into words, but he pushes it down and speaks softly.

“ _I’m_ not fine with it,” he declares. “I can’t imagine a life you’re not in.”

A chuckle slips through her lips, and she winces. She doesn’t mean to laugh at him, but she can’t help it. “You’re not losing me, Bellamy. I’m not gone and I’m not leaving. I’m just… keeping to myself.” She resumes her place with her head on his shoulder and they go back to watching the fire. The flames move with such grace it captivates him.

“I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you again,” he whispers.

She closes her eyes, willing the tears to stay put and she takes a shaky breath. “Bellamy-”

“It nearly killed me, Clarke. It ate at me everyday for years. I almost floated myself, I swear to God.” Her breath hitches at that. “I left you to die on an irradiated planet and to me you were dead. Like, ceasing to exist dead. And I cried so hard some days that I threw up. Poor Monty was scared it was the algae. It didn’t help,” he adds with a snort. “I felt like I left my heart with you when we took off and I wasn’t sure how I was going to operate without it. You told me I was all heart and I needed to learn to use my head. Heart and the head. That was my mantra for six years. Nothing else mattered. Eventually, something within me told me I had to ship up. I had to help the others survive the Ring. Especially Emori and Echo, because they were grounders their entire lives. And then Murphy decided around that time to disconnect. I swear, Raven and Monty were the ones keeping the group together and for that I am forever grateful.”

Clarke listens intently. She hates knowing that he mourned her so much, hates even more that he nearly killed himself, and the thought of a heartbroken Bellamy ejecting himself from the Ring makes her sick. The only reason she’d survived all those years was because of Madi, and the hope of seeing the man she loves again. It’s with that she interrupts him. She leans up to kiss him on the cheek. This is familiar territory for them and she needn’t worry about crossing any lines. She doesn’t do what she _wants_ to do, but then, when does she ever get what she wants?

He startles at that but closes his eyes so softly so she knows it’s OK. Then she kisses his shoulder - it’s not the lips, so it’s also OK, then rests her head again. He’s quiet for a moment before he continues. “Then, _somehow, some way_ you were alive after all those years. And I made a promise to myself to never lose you again, even in spite of the things we did to each other,” he adds painfully. “And then…” He doesn’t have to finish. She knows what he’s going to say. She died and was bodysnatched and he had to bring her back _again_ , had to rescue her for the umpteenth time because he’s always saving her from precarious situations that she mostly gets herself into. 

“Thank you,” she says earnestly, lacing their fingers in the hand he was holding. “For saving me.” It’s a sentiment she’s said before, only like, 132 years ago and before Praimfaya, but it’s one worth repeating. “You’re always saving me. More than you realize.”

“I wish I could save you now,” he tells her simply.

“That’s not your responsibility.” He tenses and she squeezes his hand before adding, “I think _I_ have to save me. I’m just a little out of sorts, Bellamy. I take long walks, I draw, I cry. These things help me. It’s what I need right now. It’s how I cope when the others don’t want to be around me. It’s how I cope when I don’t want to be around myself.”

He dares to make her look up at him by gently cupping her cheeks with his palm and he looks into her eyes intently. The blue in her eyes reminds him of Earth’s ocean and it hurts him for a moment, but he doesn’t fold. “I’ll always want you around me.”

That does it. She can’t help herself. As a tear slips down her cheek she does the scary thing and reaches up to pull him down to her lips. Her fingers tangle in his hair as she begs him to kiss her back, but she braces for him to pull away, for him to tell her that he’s in a committed relationship, for him to tell her they’ll always be friends. Maybe it’d be easier if he did, because then she wouldn’t feel guilty about avoiding him again and she wouldn’t read too much into this campfire conversation. If he’d just pull away like she expects him to, maybe the world would right itself.

But he doesn’t pull away and life wants to hurt her a little more.

Instead, his arm snakes around her and he rests his hand on the small of her back while he holds her face with his other hand, and he kisses her back. He kisses her with such ferocity she can hardly stand it. In a move that surprises both of them, he starts to lower her to the ground, easing himself on top of her as he does. His lips only leave hers to plant soft pecks around her cheeks, chin, neck. He makes it to her collarbone before he’s back to her lips.

She wonders if she’s dreaming. She wonders if this is the universe’s way of a cosmic “fuck you” to the _Great Wanheda_. God knows, she’d deserve it. She tries her hand at grounding herself with a pinch, but it doesn’t take. She does it again and this time Bellamy notices.

“What are you doing,” he breathes into her between kisses. He stops to pull away as she pinches her arm. He looks at her incredulously and finds a face full of tears. “Clarke.” He lifts her up as she cries and brings her face to his chest. He rocks her gently. 

“This isn’t real,” she tells him emotionally.

“It _is_. I’m here. I’m real.”

She sniffles and covers her face with her hands. “I’m sorry,” she whimpers.

He shakes his head before resting his chin on hers. “Don’t apologize. Don’t.”

“Would you stay with me tonight? Here?” Before he can even think about responding, she quickly adds, “I understand if not, you have a family and you probably-”

“Hey, _you’re my family, too,_ ” he cuts her off, repeating the very words she said to him only weeks ago. “I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me.”

She doesn’t thank him because she’s sure that if she speaks again she’ll regret it, but she does take his hands again and let herself fall asleep in his arms.

* * *

He wakes the next morning with sticks in various places and Clarke nuzzled against his chest. He gets a good look at the forest around him now that the sunlight has broken through the trees. It’s an extremely dense area of the forest, so it’s no wonder he couldn’t find his way out last night. He looks around at the extinguished fire and is reminded at all the nights he spent around a fire with Clarke, gazing at her as the flames illuminated her face and marveled at the way she allowed herself to be vulnerable with him.

He wonders, also, if the fire could talk, what stories would it tell? What secrets would it keep?

He notices her sketchbook an arm’s length away and he takes it, careful to not disturb her. He suspects she hasn’t slept well lately and wouldn’t want to affect what he hopes was a peaceful night. It takes some maneuvering to look through the pages because he’s laying on his back and it’s really not that easy to do such a task with one hand, but he does manage to flip through them slowly. 

Every drawing is, at the very least, incredible. He sees a lot of things he recognizes - the dropship, the grounder bridge, the Rover, Becca’s lighthouse. He even sees the rocket in which he left her. He can’t help but let his fingers trace the sketches, surprised at how emotional they could make him.

He sees one of Monty and Harper, which tugs at his heart then, and there’s even a page dedicated to the grounders they’d known on the ground - save for Echo and Emori, as they’re here on Sanctum. He sees Roan, Lincoln, and Lexa. Then sees Luna and Nyko. Another page is just Abby, Jake, Madi, and Clarke. Another page is SpaceKru - a group she never got to be with. What breaks him, though, is the picture of him and her. And he recognizes the exact moment, because of course he does - it’s the first time they’d seen each other in six years. 

He stares at it an impossibly long time. So long, in fact, that he notices Clarke’s breathing become less regular and her heartbeat more rapid. He peers down at her face and notices her thick lashes batting away traces of tears. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t,” she whispers hoarsely. “I slept really well for the first time in over a century.” She pauses, then quickly adds, “thank you.”

He kisses the top of her head again - a gesture he’s come to enjoy since last night - and goes back to the sketchbook. “These are really beautiful,” he tells her. “I remember most of these moments better than I’d have expected.”

She doesn’t say anything, but instead she sits up, away from him. He follows her, instantly worried that he’d said the wrong thing. “I’m sorry about last night,” she says, her voice uncharacteristically stoic. He supposes it _isn’t_ actually uncharacteristic for Clarke to be hardened and strong. But last night she let herself be fragile with him, and he hadn’t expected it to be over so soon.

He shakes his head in confusion. “Sorry for what?”

She averts his gaze as she starts to pack up her things, then, “for kissing you,” she answers simply. “I shouldn’t have. I know you’re in a relationship and have been for years. I shouldn’t have kissed you and I’m sorry.” She tactfully takes the sketchbook from his hands and, once she’s zipped her pack, she heads into the forest.

He runs after her then and grabs her arm, turning her to face him. “Hey.” She avoids his gaze so he pointedly ducks to get in her line of vision. “ _Hey_. Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” she replies lamely.

“ _That_ ,” he seethes. “Don’t pretend last night didn’t mean something.”

“Of _course_ it meant something!” she yells, catching herself off guard. She lowers her voice. “But it can’t happen. So we go back to the way things were.” She starts off again and this time a very irritable Bellamy gets in front of her and body-blocks her.

“The way things were?” he repeats with a huff. “You mean where you avoid me for weeks at a time and don’t sleep and are miserable? I don’t want to go back to that, Clarke.” She looks worn again, like she did last night, and that upsets him. “I can’t go weeks without you again.”

“Bellamy,” she pleads. “Please. Just go back to Sanctum and be with the others. Please. Go be with Murphy and Miller and Raven and Echo-”

“I don’t _want_ Echo!”

Well, that shuts her up. She stands in stunned silence while he looks in her eyes like he’s desperately searching for answers. “Bellamy-”

“No, Clarke. You don’t understand. I love Echo,” he admits. “I do. But it’s always been you. It’s been you above everyone else. You’re the one I’ve loved for what seems like a lifetime. You’re the one who’s loved _me_ for reasons beyond my comprehension. You’re the one who’s saved me. You talk about me saving you, but Clarke - you’ve saved me twice as much in so many ways that might not make a difference to you, but mean everything to me.” He stands closer to her and takes her hands in his before continuing. “I’m _in love_ with you, Clarke Griffin. In this world, in this life, in all the lives after. I’m in love with you and you’re in love with me and none of the rest of it matters. What matters is us. What matters is that I’ll stand by you until I die because _you’re_ the one I want to spend my life with. Do you hear me? Do you understand that? It’s you. It’s always been you, Clarke. The heart and the head, like it was meant to be.”

She’s crying again - for God’s sake, she’s always crying, it seems, and she wants to run away. But she’s glued to the forest floor as the man she’s in love with begs her to let him in and she can’t help the way the armor around her heart cracks and disintegrates. She can’t help but step into his arms and wrap herself around him until she leaves tear stains in his shirt. She can’t help but reach up and kiss him tenderly and emotionally and with conviction.

She’s in love with Bellamy Blake and he’s in love with her and they’ll figure the rest out as they go.

He’s in love with Clarke Griffin and she’s in love with him and they’ll figure the rest out as they go.

If fire could talk, what stories would they tell? Fairy tales of love or chronicles of despair? Perhaps both. Perhaps the story of Bellamy and Clarke would be the greatest story ever told.


End file.
